Fear of Flying Just Part of the Fun For This Flying Doctor

BY LLOYD GORMAN

IRISH MEDICO MARK RUDDY KNOWS YOU HAVE TO BE READY FOR ANYTHING WORKING FOR THE ROYAL FLYING DOCTORS SERVICE (RFDS). NOTHING IS PREDICTABLE AND FROM ONE HOUR TO THE NEXT HE COULD BE GIVING LIFE SAVING ADVICE OVER LONG RANGE RADIO TO THE A SHIP OFF THE WA COASTLINE WITH A SICK CREW MEMBER FROM THE RFDS BASE IN BROOME, A MINE SITE ACCIDENT OR A TOURIST INJURED WHILE BRAVING THE KIMBERLEY’S GIBB RIVER ROAD.

It would be an unusual day when he didn’t find himself boarding one of the many planes in the RFDS fleet on a mercy dash to a life or death emergency situation, or to reach a health clinic for a remote Aboriginal settlement or some settlement in the WA outback. Never a dull moment. But even Mark wasn’t quite expecting it when a medical mission brought him face to face with an old friend from Ireland. “Only an Irish person could bump into one of their best mates while on patient retrieval in very rural Western Australia and get offered a cup of tea,” Mary O’Dea tweeted on May 27 of herself, with a photo of herself and Mark. The social media shout out naturally caught the interest of Irish Scene which investigated further. Mark, who hails from Dalkey in Dublin, explained that they were old friends who studied medicine together at Trinity College. “The last time we saw each other was in Dublin in December 2019 for mine and Gemma’s engagement party. It was also a bit of a going away party because we left very shortly afterwards for Australia. We went to Townsville, where I worked on the Rescue 521 helicopter. That was January 2020 so we just got in before COVID.” Apart from dealing with an all consuming virus, Mark – who worked as a GP in Dublin – had to grapple with another major difficulty in his new role in a rescue helicopter – a fear of flying. “I never really liked flying full stop but I’m a doctor with an interest in pre-hospital care which means in countries like Australia a lot of aviation work as well. So you can imagine I had a bit of anxiety at the beginning but not for long. Being in a helicopter with the headphones on so that you can

hear the pilots and crew talking to each other lets you understand first hand how good these guys are at their job and skilled in dealing with every sort of situation that can crop up. They are very experienced and skilled professionals. You are in the best of hands.” His newfound faith was put to the test again when the couple came to WA in February of this year and he took up his new role as a flying doctor in Port Hedland and then Broome. “I’d never been in a small plane before and here I was in them often landing aggressively and taking off from dirt and gravel runways and airstrips in the Kimberley.” The RFDS in WA has 16 Pilatus PC-12 aircraft which are all fitted out so that they can operate as flying critical care units. As well as these prop planes, the service also has two specialised jets which can fly faster and further and still be able to operate from air strips that would be off limits for most jet pilots. Now Mark doesn’t even blink an eye. “I’ve given into it now, its all part of the fun,” he laughed. There is a strong sense of comraderie in the service, which attracts a lot of people from across the world. “There’s loads of Irish here too,” added Mark. “There’s two or three doctors in Broome and a doctor in Kalgoorlie whose sister I worked with in Ireland.” Opposite left and above: Irish RFDS pilot Mark Ruddy.

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Above: Ruddy reunited in Broome with Irish nurse Mary,

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What he didn’t know was that Mary – a neonatal consultant – was now living in Perth for the past year and working at Perth Children’s Hospital and King Edward Memorial hospital. She was despatched as part of a specialist team from Perth on the flight to Broome where they had their impromptu reunion. “Talk about a surprise, for both of us, it was great,” he added. The friends made plans to catch up again, including a return trip to the tip of the state for Mary. Now in the second year of their two year visa stint, Mark and Gemma are applying for residency so they can stay and experience more of what Australia has to offer. Eventually Mark sees them returning to Ireland and his former role there as a GP. “That’s the plan anyhow,” he added. “And assuming that’s the case I will always be able to look back at the incredible and unique experiences I had here.”

Mark off-duty with fiancee Gemma Above: The Irish Air Ambulances at work across the country

THE RISE OF IRELAND’S AIR AMBULANCES

Every Australian – country folk and even their city cousins – knows about the Royal Flying Doctors Service. The life-saving service has been around since 1928 and as we explored in the January 2020 edition of the magazine, has some Irish DNA running through it. It’s Victorian born founder John Flynn was the second son and one of four children of Irish emigrant Thomas Eugene Flynn, originally a school teacher. The concept of aviation medical care is less well known and not as developed in Ireland, but major strides in the field have been taken in recent years. It is only fair though to remember that the Irish Air Corps has since the 1960’s provided critical medical air support and transport for not only the Irish Defence Forces but also the civilian population. In early June for example, 104Sqn completed an air ambulance transfer of a nine month old to the UK for treatment. The child and it’s carers were carried across the Irish Sea in a PC 12 plane, the same type that makes up most of the RFDS fleet in WA. A few days earlier “a precious cargo” of a baby weighing just 1kg – being transported in a 250kg pod – was carried by an Air Corps helicopter crew to where it needed to be. These and other mercy dashes are typical of the daily duties of these men and women and their flying machines. New operators have emerged in recent years. In June 2012 the Department of Health and the HSE’s National Ambulance Service launched the country’s first emergency aeromedical service, based out of the army’s Custume Barracks in Athlone in the midlands (where the Irish UN Peacekeepers in the Jadotville battle came from). A military helicopter was dedicated to the service for the rapid transfer of patients to hospitals across the country. By October last year this service had airlifted its 3,000th patient and is going strong. In June 2019 the Department of Health and HSE (Health Service Executive) extended this original service to cover the southern half of Ireland. “The service will see the establishment of a charitably funded Helicopter Emergency Medical Service in the South, which will operate from Rathcoole Aerodrome, just northeast of Millstreet, County Cork,” then health minister Simon Harris said. “I am also pleased that this service will fulfil recommendations made by

the National Trauma Steering Group in respect of improving aeromedical services in Ireland. Looking to the future, and adopting a whole system approach to care delivery, it is clear that the National Ambulance Service will be a key enabler of Sláintecare and, in that context, it is important that we support the development of aeromedical services which will improve service efficiency and effectiveness.” In its first year (2020) of operation, Irish Community Air Ambulance responded to 490 incidents, ranging from farm accidents and falls from heights to car crashes and cardiac arrests. March of this year was its busiest month to date, with 47 emergency call outs. Similarly, Air Ambulance Northern Ireland Charity started operations on 22 July 2017 – a month earlier than expected – when it dashed a young child seriously hurt in a farm accident at Castlewellan to the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children. Since then it has carried out more than 2,000 ‘taskings’. Its EC135 helicopter and crew (pilot, doctor and paramedic) gets to wherever its patients find themselves in trauma and flies them to the the most appropriate hospital for their situation. “If a patient reaches hospital within the Golden Hour (60 minutes after their injury) their chances of survival are dramatically increased,” Air Ambulance Northern Ireland says on its website. Interestingly it also reveals that it costs £5,500 pounds a day or £2m a year – all from donations, fund raising and sponsors – to keep the service in the air. The Northern Ireland service came about as the result of the efforts of a lot of people, but none more so than that of Dr John Hinds, a Northern Irish medic interested in pre-hospital care

TURBULENT FINAL FLIGHTS HOME TO IRELAND

Every week about five (usually young) Irish people die while holiday or living and working abroad. It’s a terrible tally. Families and friends often find themselves suddenly balancing grief and the daunting and difficult administrative task of trying to get the body of their loved one home from a foreign country. That traumatic task started to change for many affected families with the establishment of the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust. The charity was started around the kitchen table of Newry couple Colin and Eithne Bell, who lost their 26 year old son Kevin to a hit and run accident in New York in June 2013, and were plunged into the process of trying to get his body home as quickly as possible so they could pay their respects and give him a proper funeral. Shortly after their experience, they heard about another Irish family who lost a young person abroad and reached out to them, offering to help guide them through the process and use excess money they had to pay for the costs involved, including for air freight for a coffin. The Trust was born as a legacy to their son. Since then they have intervened and helped return the remains of more than 1,000 men, women and children from overseas to every county in Ireland. Before he went to America, Kevin had spent time in Australia and his parents have been here to Perth where their services have been needed in dozens of cases in WA and hundreds Australia wide. In an interview on RTE radio Colin Bell said that they have faced this scenario in most countries so often that their response had become so streamlined that one phone call from them could usually set in motion the steps needed to retrieve a body from local authorities, and fly them home. Seven years after they began their merciful mission, the Bell’s consider it “an honour and privilege” to help where they can.

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and motorbike trauma medicine. Hind was himself known as a “Flying Doctor” because he was one of two doctors who rode motorbikes so that they could get to the scene of an accident quicker than other road vehicles. But he also campaigned for Northern Ireland to have its own air ambulance service, and in June 2015 met health minister Simon Hamilton to lobby for the service. A month later he was taking part in the Skerries 100 event outside Dublin when he was in a serious accident on his bike. Hind was taken to Beaumont Hospital but died shortly afterwards. He was just 35 years old. His widow Janet Acheson took up the cause and pushed authorities to introduce the air ambulance service, which, as we have seen, came into being in early 2017. DFES manages the service, which is funded by the state government and the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) WA as main sponsor (hence he name). “CHC Helicopters provide the helicopter and flight crew,” the DFES website states.

IRELAND AND WA COVERED BY SAME SEARCH & RESCUE OPERATOR

Dublin, Shannon, Waterford and Sligo are the bases for the Irish Coast Guards Search and Rescue helicopters. The fleet of five Sikorsky S-92 Helibus Search and Rescue helicopters however, belong to the CHC corporation. Unlike the entities behind the Royal Flying Doctors or the Irish air ambulances which are charities, CHC is a private enterprise, which is paid in the region of €50 million a year to provide the aircraft and crews, dating back to 2012. In a high profile incident, one of their helicopters (Rescue 116) crashed on March 14, 2017 off Mayo while on a mission to save an injured fisherman. The Irish crew of four were all killed. After the tragedy the lost helicopter was replaced with a newer version sourced from Australia. Ireland is just one of the countries where CHC operates, Australia – and Western Australia in particular – is another. The distinctive (and busy) RAC Rescue helicopter service was first introduced in August 2003, with a second in February 2016. Between them the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) estimates that with an operating range of 200km the two helicopters cover 95 per cent of WA’s population. “Based at Jandakot and Bunbury, the crews include a pilot, air crew officer and St John Ambulance critical care paramedic. During critical hospital transfers a doctor may also be on board. This vital air service transports critical care specialists to an incident and airlifts the injured to the nearest or most suitable hospital. Working alongside the Perth-based helicopter, the second Bunbury-based helicopter not only benefits community members in the South West, but also increases the capacity of the vital emergency rescue helicopter service to respond to patients across our vast State.” Major traffic crashes, cliff and sea rescues and search operations are just some of the types of operations the helicopters and their crews are called out for on a daily basis.

The RAC helicopter in Western Australia is operated by the CHC corporation